[ Thanks to Jason
Greenwood for this link. ]
“Perhaps you’ve noticed in the news litigation concerning
ownership of the intellectual property rights to Linux, the
open-source software operating system. This litigation highlights a
legal risk that users of open-source software should
understand.“Speaking broadly, open-source software is software in which the
source code (code humans can read) is distributed, free of charge,
along with the object code (code that be read only by a computer).
Generally, open-source software is shared freely for others to copy
and improve, with the stipulation that whoever makes further
improvements will make their source code available to all.“Linux is the household-name example. It has achieved
significant usage on corporate servers, and IBM is conducting an
expensive advertising campaign to promote it (to run on hardware it
sells, implemented using its consulting services)…”